In the past, research on the cognitive neural mechanism of second language (L2) learners' processing time information has focused on Indo-European languages. It has also focused on the temporal category expressed by morphological changes. However, there has been a lack of research on L2 learners' various time coding means, especially for Mandarin,…

The issues of depth vocabulary knowledge and Willingness to Communicate (henceforth, WTC) are among the most important issues in second language learning. The present study set out to empirically look into the contribution of WTC to depth of vocabulary knowledge in L2 learning. To this end, 88 English L2 learners, divided into two groups in terms…

The research aims to enhance the handling of modal verbs (MVs) in EFL textbooks by leveraging perspectives from corpora that include both native speakers' language data and the language data of individuals who are learning the language. To assess the authenticity of language in textbooks, an analysis between the native corpus and a collection of…

The present study explored how negative emotional orientations (i.e., anxiety, boredom, and demotivation) may contribute to English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' willingness to communicate (WTC) in in-person and online classes. In doing so, a total of 290 university students majoring in English were recruited to fill in a set of scales.…

The aim of this study is to shed light on the learnability regarding usages of three English articles ("a," "the" and zero) among Chinese EFL learners. To this end, three tasks were administered in a pool of 107 participants to examine the extent to which learners can accurately use articles across different semantic contexts…

Research on first language (L1) attrition typically focuses on immigrant populations in their second language (L2) environment, yet we know comparably little about L1 attrition in the L1 setting. This study used two lexical tasks to test L1 attrition, a time-sensitive word decision task and a video retelling. Chinese teachers of English vs.…

This study used an eye-tracking method to examine whether Chinese translation equivalents activated by English prime words can continue to activate their Chinese homophones. With 30 English prime words, and 60 Chinese target words as materials, the experiment used a Tobii eye-tracking device to collect data from 30 university students while…

Empirical evidence has recently been provided for the distinctiveness of emotion words as compared to abstract and concrete words for monolinguals, calling for a reconsideration of the relation between emotion and language. The present study investigates whether the distinctiveness of emotion words among monolinguals holds for foreign language…

As a basic indicator of verbal ability, verbal fluency refers to the degree of fluency in the use of language to convey information. The different components of working memory play an important role in verbal fluency. The inhibiting control mechanism takes place during L2 production processing in bilinguals, which may affect their verbal fluency…

Why do some students frequently ask questions and actively seek out answers in the classroom, while others avoid this? Many language teachers might have commonly asked themselves this question. The present study is an empirical investigation of the concept of curiosity in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Using a mixed-methods…

The present investigation aimed at studying emotional terms (ETs) in Persian and English bed-night stories for children by adopting a contrastive analysis approach within two phases. Emotional terms were categorized into two theoretical models (tokens and types) in phase one of the study, and in the second phase, the effect of teaching emotive…

This study explores the development of anaphora resolution (AR) in late sequential bilinguals, namely, adult Greek learners of Spanish at three proficiency levels (intermediate, lower advanced, upper advanced). The use of an overt/null pronominal subject anaphor is investigated in three discourse contexts: topic-continuity (a single antecedent…

In recent years, despite the fact that many researchers have devoted much of their attention to second language attrition, not much focus has been given to first language attrition (FLA) specifically among Iranian immigrants. The present study attempts to describe FLA in the semantic domain of idiomatic expression and effect of length of residence…

The usage-based theory highlights the important role of linguistic input in language acquisition, and assumes that syntactic representations could be entrenched through usage or exposure. In the present study, we used the event-related potential technique to investigate the long-term effect of input training on second language (L2) syntactic…

The study aimed to explore cross-linguistic contributions of morphological awareness to Chinese reading acquisition among Chinese heritage language (CHL) learners who had grown up speaking Chinese at home, received English medium education throughout schooling, and were studying Chinese at the time of the study. The sample thus represents a…